The explosive growth of mobile communications has made spectrum a scarce commodity and increased the focus on efficient utilization of the wireless spectrum. In this regard, a number of initiatives have been launched to share under-utilized spectrum assigned to government and military agencies with commercial entities. One of these initiatives addresses sharing the spectrum originally assigned to radar systems with commercial communication networks.
Radar systems typically transmit signals with very high power levels and low duty cycles. A possible strategy for spectrum sharing is to maintain an exclusion zone around the radar systems within which commercial networks cannot operate. The exclusion region is determined by the geographical separation required to prevent mutual interference between the radar and communication systems. However, given the large transmit power levels of radar signals, in the absence of other interference mitigation techniques, the size of the exclusion regions limit the benefits of spectrum sharing.